Friday, February 09, 2007

Zombies galore! Dead Rising for Xbox 360

Haven't had time to post because I've been too busy killing digital zombies (man, that would be a good handle or name for a web site, Digital Zombies!) in Capcom'sDead Rising. You play photojournalist Frank West who helicopters in to a military cordoned off town somewhere in the middle of Nowhere USA on a tip that there's something weird going on. I'll say, the town is full of frickin Zombies! This has got to be one of the most inventive games I have ever played. It's kind of like Grand Theft Auto with Zombies(and less driving). One cool thing is that you've got this digital camera so you're always able to take pictures of the stuff you see around you (you get points for this). The game has a great into where you're taking pics from the Helicopters and you come across some major disturbing happenings, people getting dragged out of their cars, alone on rooftops surrounded by Zombies, Gas stations blowing up etc.. It really sets the scene for when you get dropped off on the roof of a mall in the center of town.

The Mall is the only thing the town's got going for it so it makes sense that the zombies are concentrated there. The opening Act has you holed up in a maintenance room with two Homeland Security Agents that are tight lipped about the whole affair, but they obviously know more and are unwilling to share this information with you. It's up to you to find out what's going on, starting with the cranky old man holed up in the book store who they call "The Professor". Agent Jessie looks like she had a previous career as a professional wrestling manager and/or pole dancer.

One of the sidelines of the game is finding normal (not-yet-zombified) people in the mall and rescuing them by bringing them back to the security control room. Said room has all the security feeds in the mall so they are always calling you on your walkie talking to tell you about new people they see holed up in this store or that.

Speaking of stores, you can walk in into any one of them and start picking stuff off the shelves to smack zombies with. Personally I like baseball bats, although Fender Stratocaster guitars are fun, and the Battle Axe in the antique store makes short work of your new zombie Friends. Half the fun is just seeing what each thing does to the Zombies. Like that lawn mower in the Mall's central park area. Yup.. You can mow down zombies! About 50 of them before it breaks. Golf clubs are fun, you can tee golf balls off down the hallways into the zombies and perforate them until they stop lurching towards you.

One of the great things about the game, that fully immerses you is you play it for a few hours and you start to think "What would I do if I were in a mall stuffed with zombies?" Find the GUN SHOP of course (this is set in the good old US of A, right to bear arms, all that crap)! Problem is, the gun shops is owned by a good 'ole boy by the name 'o Cletus, who has gone a bit coo coo in a survivalist kinda way, and he doesn't take to kindly to no good Yankee's trying to take guns from his store. He doesn't care that you aren't a zombie, he doesn't like anybody really. To get at the booty of guns in his shop, you get to go through him. And he's HARD to take on! Once you do though, you have access to all the Sniper rifles and shotguns you want, if you can stomach running the packed hallway gauntlet of zombies in that area of the mall.And speaking of psychopaths, we have to give honorable mention to Alex the psycho chainsaw juggling clown and the guy at the grocery store with the pitchforks sticking out of his shopping cart. These are all non-zombified folks who have gone, 'just a little bit crazy' in light of the zombie times we find ourselves in.

At night, the park in the middle of the mall suddenly has this 4x4 jeep with a 50 Cal machine gun mounted in the back, driven by 3 escaped convicts who are zombie hunting. They will go out of their way to get frank and any normals though, this is anarchy after all. If you can manage to take them out, you can have great fun driving the jeep through a sea of zombies and the 50 cal gun in the back can be taken off and carried into the mall for all sorts of mischief.

Hands down the best Xbox 360 game I have played so far..

Mmmm BRAINS!!!! Here is a video trailer, kinda violent though (like the game) but you get what I'm talking about. This ain't for kids.